Comment by narratives1
2 days ago
You’re last line is correct, it certainly counts less if money isn’t changing hands.
Not because money is some sacred object, but because money changes hands when you’re doing work for others. Money is just a lubricant that allows you to contribute your work to society and society to contribute to you in a generalized way rather than a village system where everyone returns the favor in kind.
Imagine we’re in a village, I’m a farmer, youre a tailor. If you want to get fed, you have to either grow your own food or you have to trade clothes to me the farmer because I’m the only one who can trade food back. As soon as you’ve traded with the farmers and we’re all set on clothes, now how are you going to eat? The result is everyone has to be a self sufficient subsistence farmer and only a few non farmers can be supported.
Money just abstracts that labor. It keeps the score on how much you created value for others and people pay you money that they received from the value they provided others.
Work you do for money is work you did for someone else. Picking up your groceries didn’t contribute to anyone else. It’s certainly necessary, nothing morally wrong with it, but society generally should be organized to incentivize contributing to society
A bunch of those things are work for others that's not paid. And that was far from an exhaustive list.
What's confusing to me is this notion that if we ease up a little on the stick of "your life will be ruined and you may actually die", the carrot of more money will stop working because people are just that lazy. No, they're not, they do tons of work for no pay.